Tricked into Thinking

Journey from Euclidean geometry to the algorithms behind internet search and product recommendation, via the medium of girl math! We'll break down how these systems evolved, why some content gets pushed to the top of your feed, and the tricks people use to game the system for more views.

Listen to the Vox episode or read more about the theories behind why Sabrina Carpenter keeps being queued up on your playlists.

Don't forgot to check out one of the funniest articles on the internet, by Luis Prada: Amazon Thinks I'm Some Sort Of Serial Killer In Training | Cracked.com

What happens when AI is put in charge of job applications? And what about when it starts to hallucinate? In this episode, we tackle both of these questions. Starting with how ChatGPT might be revolutionising — or complicating — the job application process. Then, exploring the phenomenon of LLM hallucinations and how these oddities impact our trust in machine intelligence. Finally, we challenge ChatGPT to identify its own work. Can it distinguish between human and synthetically created covering letters? And — if it can — will it take ownership of machine generated text?

Ever wondered how we went from human calculators to high-tech machines? Join Des and Livia for a shallow swim through computational history... with a sprinkle of celebrity connections, technical trivia and a quirky journey from 17th century poetry to the chipper sassiness of ChatGPT.

Seeking a deeper dive? Check out:

The Vocabularist: What's the root of the word computer? https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/blogs-magazine-monitor-35428300

Computers are Older! A Tale of Words https://medium.com/tech-is-a-tool/computers-are-older-a-tale-of-words-3e0191ca981f

How Many Computers Are In Your Computer? https://gwern.net/computers

Computing and Crucible Eras https://testerstories.com/2023/08/computing-and-crucible-eras/